Monkeys go ape over music – but watching TV can be a turn-off

WHILE some people prefer bingeing box sets on Netflix to listening to podcasts on Spotify, a study has found that monkeys are more likely to be audiophiles than television junkies.

Experts at the University of Glasgow built a bespoke “monkey media player” for primates at Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki, Finland, to see what form of stimuli the animals preferred.

A month-long study the enclosure of three white-faced saki monkeys involved building a wood and plastic tunnel inside the enclosure and hooking it up to a TV screen, speakers and infrared motion sensors.

Interactions with visual stimuli increased in comparison with the audio stimuli.

Dr Hirskyj-douglas, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science, said: “Further study could help us determine whether the short interactions were simply part of their typical behaviour, or reflective of their level of interest in the system.”